Barring a remarkable confluence of playoff upsets, Saturday’s Ravens-Cowboys game will be the final game at Texas Stadium for the Cowboys, who move next year to their new stadium in Arlington.

Although Houston sports fans have an understandable disdain for the stadium and the inexplicable decision not to plug that pesky hole in the roof, it’s not been an entirely inhospitable venue over the last 37 years. Here are a few games where teams from Houston or southeastern Texas enjoyed success in the Metroplex, as picked by Chronicle staff writer David Barron (david.barron@chron.com).

1. Oilers 30, Cowboys 24, Nov. 22, 1979. Oilers coach Bum Phillips provided the rhetorical flourish for this Thanksgiving Day game. “They may be America’s Team,” he said of the Cowboys, “but we’re Texas’ team.” After all, the Oilers had the Tyler Rose, Earl Campbell, who ran for 195 yards and two TDs.

2. Yates 37, Odessa Permian 0, Dec. 21, 1985. Arguably the best Texas high school football team ever, the Lions won the Class 5A state title in a rout. Johnny Bailey ran for 190 yards and a touchdown, and Permian’s Mojo mystique was exposed by a Yates defense that dropped the Panthers 16 times for lost yardage and allowed minus-9 rushing yards.

3. Houston 29, SMU 20, Oct. 20, 1984. Houston ran the Mustangs to distraction with the trap play off Bill Yeoman’s veer, and the Cougars totaled 247 rushing yards and set up Mike Clendenen for five field goals. The teams tied for the Southwest Conference title, and UH’s win sent it to the Cotton Bowl.

4. Oilers 25, Cowboys 17, Nov. 24, 1988. The Oilers improved to 9-4 and the Cowboys dropped to 2-11 in coach Tom Landry’s final season. Dallas led in the third quarter before the Oiler rallied with the help of a special teams takeaway and kicker Tony Zendejas’ four field goals.

5. Houston 13, SMU 11, Oct. 18, 1980. Terald Clark had 131 rushing yards for UH, and the Cougars’ defense picked off four interceptions. But it wasn’t all bad for the Mustangs. Quarterback Mike Ford’s ineffectiveness prompted SMU coach Ron Meyer started Lance McIlhenny a week later against Texas, and SMU’s win set off a three-year run of Mustang Mania.

6. La Marque 34, Denison 3, Dec. 21, 1996. The Cougars rushed for 323 yards en route to their second of three consecutive Class 4A state or division championships.

7. Texas City 27, Hereford 14, Dec. 11, 1999. Conditions were so dreary for the Class 4A Division I championship game that Texas City coach Rusty Dowling, a pioneer of the passing game in Texas, didn’t call a single pass play. The Stingarees rolled up 422 yards, all on the ground.

B. Coomer: Chronicle

Rusty Dowling has fond memories of Irving.

8. The Woodlands 50, Tyler Lee 48 (3 OT), Nov. 29, 2003. Even though the teams combined for 98 points, this Class 5A Division I quarterfinal was decided when Wayne Hrozek of The Woodlands stopped Lee running back Keondra Smith on a two-point conversion run in the third overtime.

9. Texas Southern 34, Bishop College 21, Oct. 15, 1971. TSU and Bishop College actually christened the stadium, playing before 4,200 fans nine days before the Cowboys made their debut against the New England Patriots. The Tigers were coached in 1971 by Rod Paige, the future Houston ISD superintendent and U.S. secretary of administration from 2001 to 2005.

10. Oilers 54, Cowboys 10, Aug. 28, 1988. Indeed, we are running out of steam by resorting to an exhibition game. But it was the most lopsided preseason win in Oilers history and, given the relative arcs of the two franchises during the 37-year history of Texas Stadium, Old Ugly trumps Old Nothing.

Six venues whose designs were used as inspirations for Tudor Fieldhouse at Rice and something you may not have known about each one:

• Maples Pavilion: The floor at Stanford was once changed to remove the “missed stair sensation,” which had players thinking they landed higher or lower than the level they had jumped from.

• Cameron Indoor Stadium: According to the Encyclopedia of Duke Basketball, Duke’s Cameron Crazies fan section only picked up steam in the mid-1980s, a lot later than people think, given how boisterous they are.

• Gallagher-Iba Arena: The venue at Oklahoma State is known as “The Madison Square Garden of the Plains.”

Certainly there are running backs in the Houston area who are producing as well as the members of this octet. Let us know below who we missed.

]]>https://blog.chron.com/sportsupdate/2008/11/sports-list-high-school-running-backs/feed/7High school honor roll: Great football recordshttps://blog.chron.com/sportsupdate/2008/10/high-school-honor-roll-great-football-records/
Fri, 03 Oct 2008 14:45:54 +0000http://blog.chron.com/sportsupdate/2008/10/high-school-honor-roll-great-football-records/With North Shore getting a chance to set the state mark for consecutive wins, here’s a look at the top performers in Texas history:

• The Woodlands defense: Three fumbles forced, no completions allowed, no points allowed

Think there’s another name or team that belongs on this list? Let us know here with a comment.

]]>https://blog.chron.com/sportsupdate/2008/09/the-sports-list-high-school-standouts/feed/18Which MLB player is new Mr. October?https://blog.chron.com/sportsupdate/2008/09/which-mlb-player-is-new-mr-october/
Fri, 05 Sep 2008 13:28:39 +0000http://blog.chron.com/sportsupdate/2008/09/which-mlb-player-is-new-mr-october/Which players do you believe will have breakout seasons in the 2008 playoffs in Major League Baseball? Let us know with a comment.
]]>What’s best football game you saw in person?https://blog.chron.com/sportsupdate/2008/08/whats-best-football-game-you-saw-in-person/
https://blog.chron.com/sportsupdate/2008/08/whats-best-football-game-you-saw-in-person/#commentsFri, 29 Aug 2008 15:08:12 +0000http://blog.chron.com/sportsupdate/2008/08/whats-best-football-game-you-saw-in-person/

Associated Press

Been to a game that’s better than this one? Let us know the best matchup you saw in person.

If you tell us you were at the 1958 NFL championship game between the Baltimore Colts and the New York Giants, we’re probably not going to believe you.

But we’d like to know what was the greatest football game you ever saw in person. That’s NFL, college or high school. Tell us the date (as best you can remember), the score and why the game stood out for you.

We’re also taking comments on whether the fans think the 1958 championship game was the best in NFL history. Some like this one from the Colts earlier in the same season or this one, which was worthy of a movie, or the Patriots-Giants or Panthers-Patriots Super Bowls. But there’s room for plenty of opinions.

Now it’s your turn.

]]>https://blog.chron.com/sportsupdate/2008/08/whats-best-football-game-you-saw-in-person/feed/36The Sports List: Mysterious baseball deathshttps://blog.chron.com/sportsupdate/2008/08/the-sports-list-mysterious-baseball-deaths/
https://blog.chron.com/sportsupdate/2008/08/the-sports-list-mysterious-baseball-deaths/#commentsWed, 27 Aug 2008 17:41:52 +0000http://blog.chron.com/sportsupdate/2008/08/the-sports-list-mysterious-baseball-deaths/From the grimmer side of sports: There’s a new song out about the death of Big Ed Delahanty. With his tragic fall in mind, here are five mysterious baseball deaths:

 Ed Delahanty. Died July 2, 1903, at the International Bridge in Niagara Falls, Ontario.

From the lyrics to The Death of Big Ed Delahanty, by the Baseball Project:

In July 1903 he was hitting .333; for him that was a little bit under par. On the 2nd he jumped the team and jumped a train from Detroit to New

York, went straight for the dining car. He was boozing it up good, they say,

making trouble, cursing, shouting, `Delahanting’ in the bar. At Fort Erie,

Ontario, he was bumped from the train, wandered out on the bridge but he

didn’t get too far.

The night watchman said he’d seen a man, ended up wearing his bowler hat; he heard a splash but he didn’t see him fall. For a week no one found a clue of him. What good’s it do to question death when it makes a bad call? …

Here are the complete lyrics to The Death of Big Ed Delahanty and other Baseball Project songs at YepRoc Records. And here’s a column on Baseball Project’s CD.

  

 Roberto Clemente. He died just after plane took off in Puerto Rico on New Year’s Eve 1972 while on relief mission to Nicaraguan earthquake victims. As in Delahanty’s case, Clemente’s body was not found. Here’s the New York Times obituary on Clemente reprinted at PBS’ site.

  

 A John Doe once was mistakenly identified in Ty Cobb’s biography as having been killed by Cobb in 1912. Cobb told the author he had killed the man in Detroit, but no police report ever was made to back that up.

There is a famous story in circulation that on the way to the park in Detroit one day, Cobb was attacked by a couple of men. He fought them off and chased them away. He caught one and beat him into such a bloody pulp that the man’s face was impossible to distinguish and he was having trouble breathing. Cobb went to the park, and, despite a knife wound in the back, played that game and got a few hits. Shortly after, the badly beaten body of a John Doe was found not far from the park. Cobb later told a sportswriter that he believed he killed that man.

This story is not completely correct, and it continues to circulate and tarnish Cobb’s image. The co-author of Cobb’s autobiography, Al Stump, first reported it but never bothered to investigate the claim. Here’s what is known: in 1912, after Cobb’s infamous run-in with heckler Claude Lucker in New York, which resulted in the Tigers going on strike, Cobb and his wife were ambushed by three men in Detroit. They were not going to the ballpark in Detroit, but were driving to the train station so Cobb could travel to Syracuse to play an exhibition game. The men acted as if their automobile was broken down, and waved down Cobb.

When Cobb got out of his car, the men attacked him. Cobb brandished a gun and chased one of the men who was fleeing. According to Stump, Cobb claimed in 1961 that he killed that man in an alley. This is highly unlikely, since no bodies were found in Detroit during this period that match that story. Most likely, though we’ll never know; Cobb fought the three men, chased one down and may have pistol-whipped him. But he almost certainly didn’t kill a man, although it is possible that Cobb, who was in a diminished mental state when he spoke to Stump, could have made such a claim.

  

 Lyman Bostock. His death is only mysterious in that the assailant wasn’t even trying to kill him. He was sitting in a car with a woman (the suspect’s wife), whom he had known for only 20 minutes. An account of Bostock’s death appears on ESPN’s list of MLB players who died during a season.

  

 Cory Lidle. Winds blew Lidle’s small plane into an apartment building in New York two years ago. Authorities not sure who was at controls: the New York Yankees pitcher or his instructor. Here is an NTSB account of the accident.

  

 Len Koenecke. His death has to be even stranger than Delahanty’s. For an unknown reason, he attacked a pilot on a charter flight. He was beaten to death in self-defense with fire extinguisher one day after he was cut by the Brooklyn Dodgers. Here’s his obituary at thedeadballera.com.

  

 “Julian Wera.” A man claiming that name managed a minor-league team in California before his suicide and apparently didn’t do too badly. Imagine the surprise among police when the real Julian Wera came forward, revealing an identity theft that was way ahead of its time in 1948. The UPI had the story sewed up, according to this blog history of the Western International League.

Certainly we’ve left one or two good tales out. Let us know if we did, or tell us here of another stories of weirdness around the baseball diamond.

]]>https://blog.chron.com/sportsupdate/2008/08/the-sports-list-mysterious-baseball-deaths/feed/1The Sports List: Bear necessities at the Gameshttps://blog.chron.com/sportsupdate/2008/08/the-sports-list-bear-necessities-at-the-games/
https://blog.chron.com/sportsupdate/2008/08/the-sports-list-bear-necessities-at-the-games/#commentsTue, 05 Aug 2008 15:54:48 +0000http://blog.chron.com/sportsupdate/2008/08/the-sports-list-bear-necessities-at-the-games/The Beijing Games become the fifth in Olympics history to incorporate a bear as an official mascot. Because the action kicks off Wednesday with women’s soccer, a look at members of the ursine family that have graced the Olympics past and present:

Misha (1980 Summer Games in Moscow) – A cute and pudgy brown cub became the first Olympic mascot to enjoy extensive marketing and recognition.